I actually find I do almost all my VM management inside the virsh command. If the VM appears to exist inside virsh but is in a shut off state then you should try to start it.
VNC can also be SSH port forwarded (which I have done before). Not sure if this will help but this is the command I use to create VMs: virt-install \ --name example \ --vcpus=4 \ --disk /data/example,size=80 \ --ram 2048 \ --graphics vnc,password=**********,listen=0.0.0.0,port=15916 \ --accelerate \ --cdrom /var/kvm/ubuntu-14.04.1-server-amd64-autoinstall.iso \ --os-type=linux \ --noautoconsole \ --network network=default \ --boot cdrom,fd,hd,network,menu=off I also edit the XML file sometimes. Notice I have the autoinstall iso. Basically I went through and created a ks.cfg file after extracting the ISO file to a directory. Then I ran a command like this: mkisofs -D -r -V "auto install" -cache-inodes -J -l -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o /var/kvm/ubuntu-14.04.1-server-amd64-autoinstall.iso /root/serveriso On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 10:57 AM, KARR, DAVID <dk0...@att.com> wrote: > I'm a beginner to libvirt and creating VMs, for that matter. I have a set > of specifications for VMs I need to create and log into, but I have to > create them on an Ubuntu box that I only have ssh access to. I won't have > desktop GUI access, although I do have dynamic port forwarding, so I can > access a browser GUI from my desktop. > > Reading through the libvirt info, I see numerous mentions about using VNC > to do additional work, but I won't be able to use VNC (not allowed within > our firewall). > > I could use some advice on how to move forward with this. I've started at > https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/libvirt.html for initial > information. > > I managed to create a disk image for my first VM, and I believe I created > the first VM using an ISO (based on CentOS, I believe), but I'll probably > have to rebuild that, because I think I have to configure networks on the > VM, which I didn't do on initial creation. I was confused by the initial > results from "virt-install", because it seemed to hang after a second or > two (I posted this SO question about this: > http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31302871/trouble-using-virt-install-on-ubuntu-to-create-vm-just-hangs-after-displaying > ). The reply from this makes it seem like it was trying to present a GUI > for next steps, but I of course never saw that. The VM appears to exist, > but in a "shut off" state. > > _______________________________________________ > libvirt-users mailing list > libvirt-users@redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvirt-users >
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